Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse #4)(53)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Oh, my God, I thought. Oh, my God,

The little clearing was filled with blood and tumult. A huge animal was thrashing in the dead leaves, spraying scarlet drops on everything in its vicinity. But it was no panther. For the second time in my life, I was seeing a razorback hog, that ferocious feral pig that grows to a huge size.

In the time it took me to realize what was in front of me, the sow collapsed and died. She reeked of pig and blood. A crashing and squealing in the undergrowth around us indicated she hadn’t been alone when Crystal stumbled upon her.

But not all the blood was the sow’s.

Crystal Norris was swearing a blue streak as she sat with her back against an old oak, her hands clamped over her gored thigh. Her jeans were wet with her own blood, and her uncle and her – well, I didn’t know what relationship Felton bore to Crystal, but I was sure there was one – kinsman were bending over her. Jimmy Fullenwilder was standing with his rifle still pointed at the beast, and he had an expression on his face that I can only describe as shell-shocked.

"How is she?" I asked the two men, and only Calvin looked up. His eyes had gone very peculiar, and I realized they’d gotten more yellow, rounder. He cast an unmistakable look at the huge carcass, a look of sheer desire. There was blood around his mouth. There was a patch of fur on the back of his hand, kind of buff-colored. He must make a strange-looking wolf. I pointed silently at this evidence of his nature, and he shivered with longing as he nodded acknowledgment. I yanked a handkerchief out of my coat pocket, spat on it, and wiped his face with it before Jimmy Fullenwilder could fall out of his fascination with his kill and observe his strange companions. When Calvin’s mouth wasn’t stained anymore, I knotted the handkerchief around his hand to conceal the fur.

Felton seemed to be normal, until I observed what was at the end of his arms. They weren’t really hands anymore… but not really wolf paws, either. They were something very odd, something big and flat and clawed.

I couldn’t read the men’s thoughts, but I could feel their desires, and most of those desires had to do with raw red pig meat, and lots of it. Felton actually rocked back and forth once or twice with the force of his desire. Their silent struggle was painful to endure, even secondhand. I felt the change when the two men began to force their brains into human patterns. In a few seconds, Calvin managed to speak.

"She’s losing blood fast, but if we get her to the hospital she’ll be all right." His voice was thick, and he spoke with an effort. Felton, his eyes still downcast, began tearing clumsily at his flannel shirt. With his hands misshapen, he couldn’t manage the job, and I took it over. When Crystal’s wound was bound as tightly as the makeshift bandage could compress it, the two men lifted the now white and silent Crystal and began to carry her rapidly out of the woods. The position of Felton’s hands hid them from sight, thank God.

This all occurred so quickly that the other searchers converging on the clearing were just beginning to absorb what had happened, and react.

"I shot a hog," Jimmy Fullenwilder was saying, shaking his head from side to side, as Kevin and Kenya burst into the clearing from the east. "I can’t believe it. It just threw her over and the other sows and little ones scattered and then the two men were on it, and then they got out of the way and I shot it in the throat." He didn’t know if he was a hero or if he was in big trouble with the Department of Wildlife. He’d had more to fear than he would ever realize. Felton and Calvin had almost gone into full Were mode at the threat to Crystal and the arousal of their own hunting instincts, and the fact that they’d thrown themselves away from the pig rather than change utterly proved they were very strong, indeed. But the fact that they’d begun to change, hadn’t been able to stop it, seemed to argue the opposite. The line between the two natures of some of the denizens of Hotshot seemed be growing very blurred.

In fact, there were bite marks on the hog. I was so overwhelmed with anxiety that I couldn’t keep up my guard, and all the excitement of all the searchers poured into my head – all the revulsion/fear/panic at the sight of the blood, the knowledge that a searcher had been seriously injured, the envy of other hunters at Jimmy Fullenwilder’s coup. It was all too much, and I wanted to get away more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

"Let’s go. This’ll be the end of the search, at least for today," Sam said at my elbow. We walked out of the woods together, very slowly. I told Maxine what had happened, and after I’d thanked her for her wonderful contribution and accepted a box of doughnuts, I drove home. Sam followed me. I was a little more myself by the time we got there.

As I unlocked the back door, it felt quite strange knowing that there was actually someone else already in the house. Was Eric conscious on some level of my footsteps on the floor above his head – or was he as dead as an ordinary dead person? But the wondering ran through my head and out the other side, because I was just too overloaded to consider it.

Sam began to make coffee. He was somewhat at home in the kitchen, as he’d dropped in a time or two when my Gran was alive, and he’d visited on other occasions.

As I hung up our coats, I said, "That was a disaster."

Sam didn’t disagree.

"Not only did we not find Jason, which I truly never expected we would, but the guys from Hotshot almost got outed, and Crystal got hurt. I don’t know why they thought they should be there anyway, frankly." I know it wasn’t nice of me to say that, but I was with Sam, who’d seen enough of my bad side to be under no illusions.

"I talked to them before you got there. Calvin wanted to show he was willing to court you, in a Hotshot kind of way," Sam said, his voice quiet and even. "Felton is their best tracker, so he made Felton come, and Crystal just wanted to find Jason."

Instantly I felt ashamed of myself. "I’m sorry," I said, holding my head in my hands and dropping into a chair. "I’m sorry."

Sam knelt in front of me and put his hands on my knees. "You’re entitled to be cranky," he said.

I bent over him and kissed the top of his head. "I don’t know what I’d do without you," I said, without any thought at all.

He looked up at me, and there was a long, odd moment, when the light in the room seemed to dance and shiver. "You’d call Arlene," he said with a smile. "She’d come over with the kids, and she’d try to spike your coffee, and she’d tell you about Tack’s angled dick, and she’d get you to laughing, and you’d feel better."

I blessed him for letting the moment pass. "You know, that kind of makes me curious, that bit about Tack, but it probably falls into the category of ‘too much information,’" I said.